My Trip to the V&A "Cecil was a Caterpillar, Cecil was my friend... Cecil's at the V&A!"

A national treasure (quite literally) the Victoria and Albert Museum is packed full of breathtaking and noteworthy exhibitions. From Japanese quilts to metal work preservation, the V&A has it all.  What’s caught my eye is the Cecil Beaton exhibition. Celebrating the Queens Diamond Jubilee, the exhibition shows Queen Elizabeth II as princess, monarch and mother, in what was then and still is now, a groundbreaking approach to Royal photography. 

Striding through the London Underground, just eighteen hours after stepping onto the frosty platform at Paddington, I am hustling with the best of them. Cussing tourists under my breath and avoiding all eye contact with other public transport users - I feel like I’ve cottoned on pretty quick. At South Kensington tube station the crowd whoosh me through the tunnels towards the V&A. In reaction to being almost permanently unsure of where I am or even where I am headed there is a look of wild bemusement plastered across my face. At this very moment I don’t entirely trust the crowd I am following

I push through the heavy glass doors, sucking in that beguiling museum scent and flit towards the cafe in dire need of a caffeine fix. After recovering for a good hour, I felt ready to go in search of the Cecil Beaton Exhibition. I got fixated a few times along the way, imagining how great those Chinese rugs would look on the end of my bed, but eventually I trotted up to the entrance. I tittered there a while, umming and aahing over whether it was in fact worth the entrance fee of five pounds – that’s two coffees don’t you know?  I made the plunge.

Not being a big Royalist, hearing Cecil Beaton’s name had been enough to make me turn my head. His often fanciful and always striking fashion images have inspired generations and what was so interesting about the exhibition was the collaboration between Queen and photographer. In his diaries he wrote of her willingness to input creatively into the shoots, her suggestions of dresses and accessories that might work well together. The collection of around 100 images shot from 1904 to 1980, reflected the era’s in which they were shot in a way that I hadn’t expected.  I had always thought of Royalty as immortal, unbending to the changes affecting the common people, aloof and unashamedly opulent, but as I walked, I watched as the images morphed to fit in with the changes affecting the average Joe in England at the time. The exhibition starts with the princess wearing an elaborate, bespangled dress, and standing against an extravagant floral arrangement; she stands as a figure head, and an inspiration to young girls everywhere hoping for careers as a princesses. It moves on to post war images and shows the effect the bombings had on the palace, the young princess stands emphatically gesticulating beside a pile of rubble. After a series of predictable but of course spectacular images of the Queen’s Coronation I move on to what is the real show stopper, the thing I didn’t expect; a series of sometimes candid, sometimes not, family portraits celebrating the births of Elizabeth’s children. The photographs are convincing in their projection of love and family spirit and could be mistaken for anyone’s family photos (all be it, very well shot).

Despite initial excitement, the fact that you are looking at yet ANOTHER picture of the Queen does begin to wear thin at around half way. I sped through the second half stopping momentarily to gawp at a video playing on loop, a rather comical depiction of Cecil himself, by David Bailey. In it, he confesses to cooing ‘like a bloody dove’ to his subjects. Heralding from another era completely, watching him is very much likely watching a rather haughty Disney character. But boy was this Disney character a talent.

Test strips for both colour and black and white film.

Many of these photo's have been scanned in, exuse the funny lines.